Egg yolks

Hi food people,
New here. Want to crowd source this--
I'm doing a vegetable tartare amuse. I want to serve egg yolk with it. Because of portion size, whole yolks are out. So are quail eggs. So, to use a dollop of egg yolk that holds its body ands obtains a nice presentation, I want to whip the yolks with a little tarragon vinegar. Basically, a bearnaise MINUS the fat.

So, the question is this:
Should I temper the egg and then beat it?
Or just aerate them cold?
How much volume can the eggs handle before they degrade? I've always stopped whipping at the ribbon stage. If I just let them go in a stand mixer, will they keep getting airier, like approaching egg whites at stuff peaks? Or do yolks not do that?

The beer tartare is in a Demi tasse with a spoonful of whipped egg yolks. I was able to achieve a very stable "foam" using egg, a little oil and versa-whip, BUT I want to do this sans additives, if possible.

Question: is it just the stuff on the spoon you are talking about now? It sounds to me like you want to make a "sauce sabayon", which is like a holendaise with out oil. In a sabayon egg yolks are cooked to the gel state suspended in liquid. The liquid can be what ever you want - wine, fish fummet, or anything else. Its made by whisking the yolk and the liquid together very quickly over heat. The yolks start to gel, air gets trapped in and the sauce swells. It is possible to finish a sabayon with a little bit of burre composee or lobster butter or whatever flavorful fat you want to give it extra flavor but not turn it into a hollandaise.

I don't know about how much liquid one yolk will hold, someone here will though. I think the amount of liquid depends on the texture you want - as well as to what stage you cook the yolk.

Thanks. That's sort of what I was thinking, although I was reluctant to call it a sabayon in the absence of sugar. I was thinking tarragon and maybe mustard powder to punch up the beets. I like the idea of maybe one knob of brown butter to round it off. I'm mostly curious though about how much air the yolks will take. I suppose I just need to whisk and whisk and whisk and see what happens. I want it to be super aerated.

I have looked for a video of someone making a sabayon, but I have not found a good one. It's one of those things that's hard to explain in words but easy to do. To incorporate maximum air use the figure 8 whisking technique, start kind of slow until the yolks start to set then lift the pot off the heat and whisk at lighting speed as they finish setting while the air is mixing in. The air bubbles won't get trapped until the yolks are gelled, so you want to hit it as hard as you can as they carry through to gel. This seems to happen right about the time the mix starts to steam.

It's one of my favorite sauces because the texture is heavenly yet it is so much lighter than a hollandaise, and if you use something like a glace de viand and flamed top shelf spirits as the liquid and finish it off with a special fat then the flavor is also heavenly

As far as how much air yolks will actually hold I really don't know. It's possible that sugar makes it so they can hold more. One time I left yolks and sugar in the mixer way too long and they increased in mass about 5 times yet stayed thick. ??? This site is cool because sooner or latter someone will come along who knows everything about egg yolks and air

if you have a vac machine, vac the yolk that has been whisked with a little double cream and some pepper. Then vac and cook sous vide at around 60c for 20 minutes depending on the thickness. You should be left with a nice yolk that you can cut into squares, or you can work it into moulds of any kind too.

if you want a heavily aerated sabayon, then make your sabayon as normal, place in a espuma(siphon) gun and charge it and keep it at around 65c, should be heavily aerated. it will only keep for a service though (2-3 hours), i think it keeps much better than a classic one. you might need to do some trial and error to get the correct finished product.